In Maryland, people blocked construction then escalated to a tractor blockadeto prevent the construction of a compressor station that will bring fracked gas from the Mid-Atlantic to the Dominion export terminal in southern Maryland. People who fought the export terminal for years are now joining with neighboring counties fighting gas infrastructure and mounting a campaign against the Maryland Department of the Environment as Governor Hogan pushes $100 million in gas infrastructure.

The Message is Getting Through

Many political and economic elites want people to believe the environmental crisis doesn’t exist or is exaggerated. But these acts of civil disobedience is starting to get the message to people in high place.

Those in power seek to protect profits from dirty energy rather than transition to 100 percent clean energy. They seek to protect agribusiness food, pesticides, and genetically modified foods rather than transform food to organic, locally grown foods using regenerative agriculture. They deny the reality of environmental racism rather than correct decades of racism and provide reparations. They seek to put profits ahead of the health and necessities of people as well as ahead of protecting and restoring the planet.

Despite this, a growing portion of the public understands these realities and is taking action to challenge the system. People know, for example, as activist Steven Norris writes, that they should be concerned about the impact of carbon infrastructure on their communities and the planet.

Last week, David Buckel, a nationally known advocate for gay rights and the environment, died in a self-immolation suicide in a protest against environmental degradation. He wrote in his suicide note, “Pollution ravages our planet, oozing inhabitability via air, soil, water and weather. Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result – my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”

Protests are resulting in cities divesting from banks who fund fossil fuel projects. Europe’s largest bank, HSBC just announced it will no longer fund oil or gas projects in the Arctic, tar sands projects, or most coal projects. Corporations realize they are investing in stranded assets that may not pay off and they may be held legally accountable for causing climate change.

ExxonMobil is facing a raft of litigation arguing the company was aware of climate risks but continued to mislead the public and to pollute. State and local governments are seeking damages and calling for a federal criminal investigation. Litigation highlights the science of climate change and demonstrates how oil giants made immense profits while billions of dollars of cost from climate change, for example, immense storms and sea level rise, are borne by individuals and governments. Most suits were brought by coastal communities but recently Colorado communities are suing oil corporations over climate change-caused droughts and fires.

Exxon knew. (Photo by Johnny Silvercloud)

ExxonMobil tried to stop state investigations in Massachusetts, New York,

and Texas by misleading investors for years about climate change risks. The judge issued a sharp rebuke with prejudice preventing an appeal and allowing the investigations to continue. Oil companies may well be behind new legislation in states to give severe penalties to people protesting “critical infrastructure.”

Future generations from Our Children’s Trust have brought eight suits against the federal government over the destruction of the environment, claiming a public trust over the atmosphere. A suit filed by 21 youth in Washington has overcome government efforts to dismiss the case and will be going to trial after both the trial court and Ninth Circuit rejected the government’s argument.

The undertow of protest is having an impact. Corporations fear they will be held accountable for the damage they have done. Governments and elected officials are aware the people are angry and their careers can end with the new political culture created by popular revolt.

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42 comments for “On Earth Day: Environmental Activism is Spreading”

Alan Hans

April 24, 2018 at 8:24 pm

While I like many of the points brought up here, I think the white elephant in the room is Usury. As long as the ‘money lenders’ continue to keep us, ‘behind’, all the time, we must therefore always ‘grow’. The laziest way to grow economically is to grow through immigration, which perpetuates unbridled population growth. Why does the interest from credit go into private hands? I’m not asking a pollyanna question, I’m trying to stir up conversation. For some reason (nudge, nudge, wink wink) we are only offered the usual Capitalism vs Communism limits in scope. Why? It’s 2018, we can have an endless stream of options with 5-10 years of focused international discussion. I’d feel safe to say, that the powerful netcar of Usury may be at the root of our ability to move forward on many many many fronts. Personally I’d like any money made from credit goes to the country’s infrastructure and social programs. It could replace most taxes. If you are going to access the ‘sin’ bin you pay. Now, we just have to break the news to the people that have ‘everything’…gulp

No, Someone in Asia, your vague statement is not “Enough said”. If you read backwardsevolution’s post preceding yours, the question of who controls money is quite clear, and “changing the way money works” is no simple matter. Tell that to the bankers and their controllers above them.

Trump, at the Paris Climate Accord conference, said that he’s all for reducing pollution, but it can’t JUST be at the expense of the U.S. China is spewing out tremendous amounts of pollution, and then turning around and shipping their products all over the world – by plane, by ship, by barge – adding more pollution. Yet at the Paris clown parade, China was given a pass.

Malaysia and Indonesia are burning down their forests as fast as they can (no doubt the multinational corporations are now the owners of that land), which is choking half of Asia with smoke. I can’t remember the figures – you can look it up – but this practice is causing a huge percentage of the world’s pollution.

Sure, the U.S. can feed the world population now, but it is quietly and quickly depleting its acquifers. When the water runs out, as it will, these corporations will just say, “Whoops, sorry about that,” and then they’ll fly off to some other country where they purchased a property decades ago. You? You’re screwed.

Trump nixed the TPP. The globalists must have wanted to kill him for this, but I think they’d be happy with his impeachment, which they’re working hard to bring about, going so far as hiring armies of people (yes, even on the Internet) to go after him, and paid for by the likes of people like George Soros. You must be very careful who you listen to and what they say.

Many of these organizations have an ulterior motive. While pretending to hate Trump for his stance on illegal immigration, controlling the borders, creating a fair trade balance and concentrating on the U.S. instead of poking our noses into other people’s business, they keep secret their real objective: a one-world government. You can see this one-world government in many of the organizations they have fought so hard for: the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, TPP, supranational courts (which overrule our courts), wars, etc.

This is a fight between the globalists and the nationalists, between multinational corporations and the people. Follow the money. If you’re not paying attention, you could almost be fooled into thinking that the globalists actually care about other nations, other peoples. Well, I guess you could say they do; they want to control these nations and these people.

If you’re not paying close attention, you can’t see these globalists who are busy engineering and steering the world in the direction they want.

Mild-ly - Facetious

April 23, 2018 at 12:55 pm

On Earth Day: Environmenal Activism is Spreading
April 22, 2018

Across America environmental activism is growing, and government and the fossil fuel industry are taking notice, say Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers.

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Tree-sits are growing in West Virginia where people are putting their bodies on the line to stop the destruction of the natural habitat that would result from building the Mountain Valley pipeline for fracked gas. In Virginia, Red Terry started a tree-sit on Easter weekend to protect her land from destruction. She remains, despite the company, with law enforcement support, denying her food and water — something illegal against…

What about the anti – environmental Pruitt acting aggressive and hostile in favor of Oil and Chemical Companies.
Allowing known chemical pollutants to be dumped into living rivers and streams. Funding dangerous oil and gas pipeline construction.
What about the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Collection Facility that seems dangerously vulnerable. Like another Fukushima.

Life on Earth is dying. It is the victim of a serious disease – homo sapiens. Unless this species relents in it’s drive towards unlimited growth, like a cancer, it will extinguish all other species, and eventually itself. We are driving a deathcar with no brakes and no reverse, with an accelerator stuck on maximum speed, headed towards an unyielding wall called ecological collapse.

It’s getting worse – everywhere. I wince when I see misspellings or botched verbs in a major web site like a big newspaper. On the foreign sites, I suspect Google Translate was used, for often every third sentence has something seriously wrong with it.

I don’t “rent” books, but a few years ago Amazon offered a no-cost Kindle For Computers or some such name. Many of the materials are either free or 99 cents, so I tried it out. A WW2 history book I downloaded had dozens of errors on the first three pages. Somebody had pushed the text through a cheap OCR program, and hadn’t even glanced at it before selling it on Amazon. About then I learned most old military history books published by the government are available free in the form of PDFs from excellent scanned page images, so I pitched the e-text as well as the Computer Kindle.

People no longer seem to care. I was shocked when I first saw shorts and tennis shoes in Sunday church services. This was in a gym-like room and the parishioners sat on folding metal chairs. (the big drums and huge speakers and other sound equipment was inactive at the time – Old People services) Men and women seem proud of their overweight and flabby bodies – they wear tight-fitting clothing which emphasize every roll of fat. Loud talking on their cell phones – as if they believe the whole world is wanting to hear them. And the grammar! “Did you went to dinner yet?” was one inquiry spoken into the phone. Actually the quote was worse than that, but my mind has been working hard to forget the episode.

I applaud environmental activism, and, yes, the talk must also be accompanied by the walk, as Irina says. Mike posted “Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir” the other day. Yes, Earth’s population is a problem, government and corporate activities have no environmental sustainability ethic. The ocean is loaded with plastic killing wildlife. Cutting our personal consumption of goods and limiting consumption of plastics is extremely important, that stuff is everywhere! Until Earth sends humans a message that can’t be ignored, it’s up to each of us to live by right action, both personal and group activism.

Anon

April 23, 2018 at 7:59 am

It is counterproductive to get excited about environmental change before political change:

1. The environment change will cause significant but not large change over the next century;
2. It cannot be slowed without major national and international political action;
3. It is the least issue that requires major national and international political action;
4. It is promoted as a cause by oligarchy to divert young and timid people from the real issues;
5. It will not be solved, like the other issues, until oligarchy is destroyed and democracy is restored;
6. When democracy is restored, the necessary changes will be obvious and will be balanced by experts.

Oligarchy will throw hopey-changey candidates at activists to go home happy and turn on the TV.
The courageous fighters for democracy who instead decided to play with pretty nature words.

As I believe I’ve remarked here before, I used to live on a nice wooded lot. Unfortunately most of my trees were giant ashes. Every one of those is now dead because an insect which used to be winter-killed survived to destroy them. My Easter flowers bloomed weeks before Easter. I’ve read that armadillos have a toehold in southern Indiana, and are moving north. Fire ants will be coming north. According to reports I read Canada doctors are seeing Lyme disease for the first time as ticks move north.

All this, and the environmental disasters haven’t gotten well started.

Anon

April 23, 2018 at 9:10 pm

I understand the concerns, and certainly there is room for differences on relative impacts and priorities. Environmental changes are indeed troubling, large in scale ,and cause many problems even when not catastrophic. I wish that we had avoided them, and hope that we can minimize them.

Also, I recognize that environmental activism is a fine training ground for uncertain young activists, to learn about the political problems that prevent progress on environmental issues, and we must accommodate their need for that experience. One must respect the issue and the principles of its sincere activists.

The danger I point out is that such a neutral issue plays right into the hands of oligarchy, which loves to see those liberal kids playing with flowers and advocating niceness to nature in the corner, as they send armies into secret wars. They know that those who buy this as a big political issue will not affect the gang war of US government and mass media. This was their game in the 70s: give the climate kids enough airtime to suppress the real issues, and they will continue to accomplish nothing in politics as in the last 50 years.

This does not imply disrespect, it merely recognizes that we are being had by propaganda everywhere.
My feeling is the serious activists should concentrate on the core issues and changes needed to get all of the policies needed, using the longterm neutral issues mainly to train young activists until we get there.

Anon

April 23, 2018 at 10:07 pm

Should have said that I do not wish to offend, just concerned about the focus on our many problems.
Your comments have been excellent and show perception and wit.

john wilson

April 23, 2018 at 4:38 am

Its simple really, the world’s population is just too big and it needs to be culled by at least 80%. The trouble with this is: who is to be culled and who will be doing the culling. If its done via world war three, then the planet won’t be fit for humans and most other living creatures. We are screwed how ever you look at it !!

Anon

April 23, 2018 at 8:10 am

I suggest solving the political institution problems before crediting the alarmists about climate change.
Sea level change and desertification move agricultural land areas, but do not reduce the area.
Food supply is sufficient, expandable, and maintainable despite substantial climate change.
The wars are not about food and do not seek to reduce population across all groups.

irina

April 23, 2018 at 10:56 am

The problem with a ‘maintainable’ food supply is that we assume the climate will
remain stable enough (at perhaps as you say a different level of stability) to allow
reliable, continued annual food crop production (e.g. the cereal grains, etc.)

That may not be the case in the near future. Short-term climate variability may
become extreme enough (droughts / floods / frosts during the growing season)
to prevent annual crop production in many currently fertile agricultural areas.
That means not only crop failures, but also loss of ability to save seed for the
next year. Perennial crops are more reliable but do not produce similar yields.

Grasslands are potentially the most resilient of agricultural lands, but obviously
cannot be consumed directly. Maybe the next generations will be pastoralists ?

Thank you both; yes, the changes are very troubling, and the solutions will require much work.
It is important that some of us be experts in these areas, and that all be informed.
My concern is simply that we first focus primarily on our corrupt political institutions.
We are led astray by mass media emphasis of neutral issues and suppression of very serious issues.

I’m going to give this particular post a 100% rating, for I believe you are wrong on every single statement you’ve made here.

WC

April 23, 2018 at 2:19 pm

And I am going to give you a 100% rating of being disingenuous, Zac. You spilled the beans on another article as to what you really want. If that doesn’t kill us all nothing will. :)

Anon

April 23, 2018 at 10:21 pm

That’s fine, Zachary, I welcome debate on all points. See my responses above.

irina

April 22, 2018 at 10:05 pm

It’s easy to talk the talk. Walking the talk is something else.
Last week, I was at the excellent Arctic Encounter Symposium in Seattle,
where leaders representing diverse interest of the Circumpolar North gather
to discuss, debate and deliberate about our common future.

One of the keynote speakers was, newly elected Congresswoman Pramila Jaypal
of Seattle. She is a firebrand and gave a stirring speech (sounding suspiciously like
a campaign speech) about environmental activism and achieving 100 % clean energy
by 2050. Then, in the next sentence, she said that she “Couldn’t wait to go visit ANWR
and hoped to do so very soon”. I happened to be sitting next to a Coast Guard officer,
who muttered, “Well, she better start walking . . . ”

Then she stated that “We need more icebreakers”. True. Someone asked her,
“How are you going to power those icebreakers ? Solar ? Wind ? Nuclear ?”
Clearly that was not something she had thought through . . .

I disagree. Until there is high-speed rail connecting every place on the continent, flying is the only realistic option. And the special jet-plane kerosene doesn’t have to originate from “fossil fuels”. In a rational society inhabiting our particular planet the necessary liquid fuels would be manufactured from atmospheric CO2 using solar/wind energy to power the factories.

Clearly that was not something she had thought through . . .

Yes, she hadn’t thought it through. Under the circumstances a nuclear power plant is the “least bad” power plant for an icebreaker. I looked through the woman’s thin record and saw some stuff for which she hadn’t given enough thought. Still, I found no flat-out evil in her votes or public statements, and would willingly trade her for MY representative or either senator.

irina

April 23, 2018 at 10:46 am

Um, the other ‘realistic option’ is living much more locally.
My sister was lauding the praises of a friend who ‘flies all over the world
talking about climate change’. No contradiction in terms there ! Haha.
There is such a thing as virtual conferencing now, which is much more
planet-friendly. We have the technology but many of us just love to ‘travel’.

We seem to think that air travel is our inalienable right. But we really don’t
have to much of a clue what those planes traveling at 36,000 feet are really
doing to our atmosphere. It’s not good and a major contributor to climate shift.

Some of us just don’t travel much, and that’s not a bad thing. We don’t need
‘high-speed’ rail either, what is the big rush ? Old fashioned trains still work fine
and would be perfectly adequate if the money to maintain them and their tracks
was made available instead of being diverted into fancy new airports. In the future
there is a good possibility that latter-day dirigibles will also make a comeback.
They are energy efficient, have a small takeoff and landing footprint, and can travel
to remote areas where it’s completely impracticable to have ground access due to
terrain (mountainous areas, thawing permafrost zones, too remote for access, etc.)

Yes the Arctic is thawing. Oh wait, it’s springtime up here ! I just returned from my
twice-yearly trip to Seattle to visit my 94 year old mother, who is doing excellently.
Seeing the cities with the big airports and endless traffic is always a wake-up call
to me as to how clueless most people are about the major shifts that are upon us.

AS MAJOR AS OUR ANNUAL SHIFT FROM WINTER TO SUMMER. (sorry for shouting)

Removing Track in the Rail to Trails movement is usually a negative action for transportation. Rail being the most environmentally friendly method to move freight on land.

irina

April 23, 2018 at 10:15 pm

My 94 year old mother (I went to Seattle to help her pack up her house)
remembers the freedom she had as a young woman when riding trolley cars
and other city transit. But all those rails were pulled after world war 2, and
the tank factories were reconfigured to build cars, and Eisenhower pushed
for the interstate highway system (forerunner of today’s freeways) because
he was so enchanted with the German ‘autobahn’ network. Rail is indeed
by far the most efficient way to move freight. However, environmental
permitting for new / extended rail lines makes even the planning prohibitive.

The military quietly took this country over years ago. The sleeping sheeple don’t have a clue who is really running things.

mike k

April 22, 2018 at 9:20 pm

The greatest polluter of our planet is the US government. It makes me darn proud to be an America. Donald T. will make sure we remain number one in this category. USA! USA! USA!

elmerfudzie

April 22, 2018 at 7:42 pm

I’ve yet to see and examine documents, papers, e-forums, lectures et cetera, that address novel energy alternatives, various conspiracies to interfere with their promotion or advertisement(s) ASIDE: let us recall the 3-D printing invention of the early 1960’s and electric cars quietly scrapped at about the same time. Conspiracies such as but not limited to:

Is Pew Research waiting for the day when it’s corporate finding moguls announce a proposal to clean up the worlds oceans provided that they’re CEO’S gain full and permanent possession of the surfaces and depths below these oceanic garbage dumps?

Are there government grant monies available, in equal proportion to, current general fundings for energy alternatives such as destructive distillation of coal by harnessing energy from wind and solar sources towards converting coal into various liquid fuels?

Will Thorium 232 (ever) be identified and recognized and aggressively promoted by the UN, as one of the best energy sources in terms of availability, anti-terror, anti-nuclear proliferation energy, affordable waste processing alternative to the Uranium/Plutonium cycles of the worlds commercial power stations?

Will we ever see a comprehensive, global project that continuously monitors the volcanic activity and emissions, of at least a thousand of the five thousand, actively belch sulfur, methane and carbon dioxide, whenever they please, after all they do span the breath of all the earth’s five great ocean floors?

Are the latest developments in laser powered -fusion energy research, break-through(s) and superconductivity electrical power grid distribution plans/systems being deliberately kept away from public view and comment by a select group greedy Wall Street speculators and or special interest lobbies throughout the Western governments?

Hang it all Dr Watson, where the hell is Sherlock Holmes?!

Joe Tedesky

April 22, 2018 at 7:41 pm

It is a joy to read that the environmental protestors are gaining some well deserved ground. Now, if only there were a political leader who would pick up the challenge to save our withering planet. What is most important, is that we citizens dictate to the corporation, and not accept our relationship to this business class as it being the other way around.

The situation is considerably worse than what the authors have described here.

“Trump’s Latest Plan for Saving Coal Comes From the Cold War”

Months into the Korean War, President Harry Truman capped wages and imposed price controls on the steel industry, seizing authority under a newly passed law to take action in the name of national defense.

Now, more than a half century later, Trump administration officials are considering using the same statute to keep struggling coal and nuclear power plants online, according to four people familiar with the discussions who asked for anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Under the approach, the administration would invoke sweeping authority in the 68-year-old Defense Production Act, which allows the president to effectively nationalize private industry to ensure the U.S. has resources that could be needed amid a war or after a disaster.

Throwing unlimited amounts of taxpayer dollars at dangerous and floundering old nuclear plants.
Subsidizing obsolete and expensive coal plants with more taxpayer money.

Obama gave the criminal bankers a few thousand billion dollars, but at least his outrageous lawlessness didn’t help destroy planet Earth. What Trump may do is worse.

“World may hit 2 degrees of warming in 10-15 years thanks to fracking, says Cornell scientist”

In 2011, a Cornell University research team first made the groundbreaking discovery that leaking methane from the shale gas fracking boom could make burning fracked gas worse for the climate than coal.

In a sobering lecture released this month, a member of that team, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University, outlined more precisely the role U.S. fracking is playing in changing the world’s climate.

The most recent climate data suggests that the world is on track to cross the two degrees of warming threshold set in the Paris accord in just 10 to 15 years, says Ingraffea in a 13-minute lecture titled “Shale Gas: The Technological Gamble That Should Not Have Been Taken,” which was posted online on April 4.

I don’t believe I can possibly describe what bad news this is, so I’m not even going to try.

I don’t go to the Arctic News site very often – it’s just too depressing. I’d like to quote this snippet from one of their articles though:

The IPCC appears to be strongly downplaying the amount of global warming that has already occurred and that looks set to eventuate over the next decade or so, according to a leaked draft of the IPCC ‘Special Report on 1.5°C above pre-industrial’. The ‘First Order Draft of the Summary for Policy Makers’ estimates that the global mean temperature reached approximately 1°C above pre-industrial levels around 2017/2018.

I’ve seen this a number of times myself. A majority of the Big Name climate scientists are lowballing the numbers. Perhaps it’s because they’re human, and don’t want to explain the real situation to their grandchildren. Maybe their behavior is about money – the Trumpies and the Corporate Media can be really vindictive about grants and getting published at all.

h**p://arctic-news.blogspot.com/

WC

April 23, 2018 at 12:07 am

What a killjoy you are. This is supposed to be an inspirational piece.

backwardsevolution

April 23, 2018 at 3:41 pm

Zachary Smith – are you a Soros boy?

“Obama gave the criminal bankers a few thousand billion dollars, but at least his outrageous lawlessness didn’t help destroy planet Earth. What Trump may do is worse.”

“Maybe their behavior is about money – the Trumpies and the Corporate Media can be really vindictive about grants and getting published at all.”

See, everybody, Trump did it. He’s been President for over a year, much to the chagrin of many who are working hard to get him impeached, but it’s all his fault. He’s done it all! (sarc)

And the only time the corporate media shows Trump any love is when he does what their headlines scream for – when he bombs another country. That’s the only time they laud him for being “presidential”. The rest of the time they vilify him.

Trump is trying to bring back jobs, which is all about making things “locally”, not shipping or flying products halfway around the world from China. The average piece of fruit travels 1,500 miles to its destination!

The globalists are destroying the Earth, and they’ve been operational under both the Republicans AND Democrats.

irina

April 23, 2018 at 3:52 pm

spot on ! At the moment, the US is shipping coal to — Donetsk. For real.
And the momentum behind fracking was to eventually ship fracked natural gas to the Ukraine to counter Russia’s ‘monopoly’ on natural gas supplies.

Completely insane to destroy our water tables and release considerable
methane gas into the atmosphere during the fracking process, to engage
in some sort of one-sided and ridiculously unnecessary ‘competition’ with
Russia over providing fuel to its former satellite countries. Why no outcry
over this extremely environmentally and geopolitically hazardous policy ?

Brad Owen

April 24, 2018 at 3:59 am

Should read Nat Gas for natural gas, not ant gas or near gas. Stupid spell check.

Brad Owen

April 24, 2018 at 4:19 am

I must honestly say, in addition to the globalists holding up our progress, also our own lack of spiritual/ intellectual/character progress is another holdup. If we can’t achieve World Peace and find peaceful ways of coexistence with other Nations (the Family of Humanity), then we would only allow these powerful new technologies to be weaponized, and they are more powerful than nuclear weapons. The New Silk Road is our big chance to “audition” for World Peace, and we are being “overseen” by those who are anxious for our success. We MUST succeed in beating our swords into plowshares, or the chance to progress will lay with a future humanity ten thousand generations from now. The Watchers are VERY patient.

Brad Owen

April 24, 2018 at 4:43 am

I must also add that, to the Watchers, death is but a shift in Consciousness from one frequency domain to another frequency domain. This is why Dr. Greer, who experienced an NDE as a child, cannot be made afraid and cannot be bribed, despite many assassination attempts, which is why he is succeeding with his Disclosure Project. The Globalist Cabal is experiencing “fuzzy-headedness” and failing in their judgement. They are experiencing the madness and failure that goes with ill-gotten power, with the corruption and wickedness that follows in the wake of ill-gotten power. The Universe is governed by Law, and is not a free-for-all, and against Love there is no Law. That is The Lesson.